Politics has been reduced to the level of Citzalia, an online game in which you play at taking part in the European Parliament, says Christopher Booker

Doubtless to celebrate the arrival of the silly season, the European Parliament has commissioned an online role-playing game called Citzalia which, as the think-tank Open Europe reported last week, allows citizens to imagine that they are participating in the parliament's important work. Citzalia is proclaimed as "a world you inhabit and help to create. Using your avatar, you can walk around, network, debate issues of the day, propose legislation."

All this sounds remarkably like the "virtual democracy" we already have in Westminster, under our new Coalition Government. One of its first acts, you may recall, was to open a website on which voters could propose new laws and policies. Last week it was reported that every one of the hundreds of proposals from members of the public had been rejected or ignored.

Meanwhile David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the "Brokeback Two", sent a letter round to their Cabinet colleagues reminding them that the need to reduce the Government's deficit was "the most urgent issue facing Britain today". During last May's election campaign, I listed several hugely important issues which none of the parties wished to talk about, first among them being the terrifying size of the government deficit. This was already increasing, as I reported, at £446 million every day, so that by 2014 the national debt would have doubled to £1.4 trillion. Based on figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, I calculated that the interest alone on that debt would equate to £60 a week for every household in the land. Since then, of course, the new Government has been only too happy to come out of purdah on the deficit it inherited, and to talk up all the "tough" measures and drastic cuts needed to reduce it.

Nevertheless, when Mr Osborne introduced his budget in June, the small print still projected that Government expenditure will continue to hurtle upwards, from £668 billion this year to £737 billion in five years' time. In other words, despite Mr Osbone's proposed tax increases, there is little sign that the deficit will reduce by very much.

A third end-of-term statement from the Government was William Hague's admission that "there is a profound disconnect between the British people and what has been done in their name by British governments". As Foreign Secretary, he was referring in particular to our relations with the EU (without mentioning, of course, the failure of the three main parties to keep their manifesto promises of a referendum on the EU Constitution, aka the Lisbon Treaty).

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Another Government boast last week was that, for each new regulation, an old one would be repealed. Of course, it added hastily that this would not apply to EU regulations passing into UK law – but in terms of cost and damage to the economy, it is these that make up more than three-quarters of the regulations that matter.

Thus our "virtual democracy" leads to an ever more "profound disconnect" between government and people. We "walk around, network, debate issues of the day", even "propose legislation". But as with that computer game, it is an empty charade. Behind their hands, our rulers must really be laughing at us.